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Pastimes : The Justa & Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lars who wrote (3549)	3/2/1999 9:22:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Respond to of 15132

Good article. Thanks! Grocery store chains like Kroger, Safeway, and Albertson's have thin margins too. And it is far more easier to walk across from amazon.com to positively-you.com than it is to drive from an Albertson's to a Safeway! Ergo, it is quite likely these online bookstores will have even thinner profit margins...

To: Lars who wrote (3549)	3/4/1999 1:38:00 AM
From: Lars	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 15132

* Millionaire Next Door * Some people believe that an expensive suit of clothing is a good investment. Note that the authors are not among them.

To: Lars who wrote (3549)	3/4/1999 1:40:00 AM
From: Lars	Respond to of 15132

* Millionaire Next Door * We have conceived an alternative theme for a TV quiz show--a show that is destined to fail. We will call it The Real Wealth Show. The grand prize winners receive real wealth. The other contestants, the losers, receive consumer goods.

To: Lars who wrote (3549)	3/4/1999 1:41:00 AM
From: Lars	Respond to of 15132

* Millionaire Next Door * Why did Mr. Allen refuse to accept the gift of a Rolls Royce? Because status artifacts can be a burden, if not an impediment, to becoming financially independent.

To: Lars who wrote (3549)	3/4/1999 1:49:00 AM
From: Lars	Respond to of 15132

* Financial Time Article * FUND MANAGEMENT: An American invasion A select group of London investment bosses yesterday took time off from inspecting the shortfalls in their investment returns to debate the threat of an American stranglehold on London's fund management industry. Headhunters Russell Reynolds Associates sponsored a breakfast debate on the motion: This house believes that market forces favour US firms over their European counterparts for dominance of the UK investment scene. Recent US acquisitions of UK houses ranging from Mercury Asset Management to Newton, together with rapid expansion into the UK pension fund market by the likes of J.P. Morgan and Capital Research, have highlighted the issue. At the same time, London's once powerful position in ERISA global equity mandates (world ex-US equity mandates for US pension plans) has been seriously eroded. London has long enjoyed the advantages of a strong equity-based culture and an international outlook but has never managed to build genuinely global investment firms. Historically, London's main international strengths have been in the Far East and the emerging markets, but these areas have become liabilities in the past two years. London-based managers are working hard to build expertise in continental Europe, but they have disastrously misjudged the US equity market. The Americans, meanwhile, are on the crest of a wave. Wall Street represents around 52 per cent of global equity capitalisation, giving them a tremendous natural advantage. But would US dominance outlast a Wall Street crash? The motion of the debate was proposed by Alan MacFarlane of the independently owned Global Asset Management. It was opposed by Nicola Horlick of SG Asset Management, the recent London startup backed by the French bank Société Générale. The chairman was Alistair Ross Goobey, chief executive of Hermes Pension Management. I have agreed not to attribute the remarks made by the main speakers or the contributors from the floor, but I can report the main themes, which were generally defeatist. The Americans, it was felt, were setting the agenda: they had established the processes and terminology common in the industry, and the chartered financial analyst (CFA) qualification was becoming the global standard. Another theme was: "Blame the clients." It was said that UK pension schemes, run by company secretaries and amateur trustees, lacked sophistication. US plans, by contrast, are typically managed by investment professionals who have diversified their external managers more shrewdly. British schemes, however, were said to have naively chased short-term performance and concentrated their bets on a handful of balanced managers, almost all of which are now in crisis (though surely these managers were not forced to accept so much business if they could not handle it). There was trepidation about a general switch from final-salary pension schemes to defined-contribution structures, where the Americans have greater experience. Stuffy London institutions would need to develop popular brand images to succeed in this kind of business. The main counter view was that the Americans would not prove any more successful in invading the European culture than they had in the past. Moreover, a huge switch in continental Europe from pay-as-you-go to funded pensions, a shift eagerly anticipated by the Americans, might take an awfully long time. Nobody seemed ready to predict, though, that Wall Street would soon crash and take most of the aggressive US investment groups down with it. The motion was carried overwhelmingly, by 20 votes, with only one against. One speaker considered, however, that the American threat was relatively small compared with that of the home-grown index-trackers massing at the gates.

To: Lars who wrote (3549)	3/4/1999 1:54:00 AM
From: Lars	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15132

* Financial Times Article * Euphoria subsides They may have made a strong start, but all the signs are that the new cyber brands face stern commercial challenges, writes Louise Kehoe We have finally entered the "post-internet euphoria" era. It is time to stop applauding companies simply for creating "dot coms" and start asking how well they "do coms", or commerce, online. Forget those breathless stories about how amazing it is to be able to buy this or that product straight from your desktop - there are serious questions about "e-business" and in particular some of the biggest names in the field. Nobody is suggesting that electronic commerce will not continue to grow rapidly and have profound effects on many industries, as well as on consumer behaviour. But there are sobering signs that the new cyber brands face challenges every bit as complex as their bricks-and-mortar counterparts. This is not just another backlash against internet hype - although that might not be such a bad thing. For the first time in their short lives, internet companies face tough issues. For a start, the average cost of those ubiquitous "banner adverts" on web sites is declining, according to market researchers. And fewer than 1 per cent of web users click on the adverts to get more information. That is very bad news for a lot of web publishers who have based their business plans on rising advertising revenues. The problem is not a decline in demand from advertisers for more exposure on the web. Rather, it is the almost limitless supply of "space" on web pages. Targeted advertising, linked to "content" that appeals to certain interest groups or high-spending segments of society, is selling at a premium, but in general the rates that web sites can charge their commercial sponsors is falling. The alternative to more adverts is subscription charges. Yet the recent decision by Slate, the high-brow "e-zine" published by Microsoft, to do away with subscription charges is another warning sign. Internet users do not expect to have to pay to read online publications, it seems, no matter how worthy their content.